Again, I didn't think his comment, and that's all it was -- a comment, was directed at traders and market timers. "Long term perspective," remember? That automatically excludes those either in or approaching retirement. Perhaps he should have given a Powerpoint presentation on TA? And if memory serves, he didn't say anything about "automatically" buying at a 50% drop. Rather, I think he said something about P/E valuations. So, we're talking about E as well as P, which doesn't suggest mindless buying across the board.
The other explanation is that he doesn't care whether his advice is informed or not. If he gets some marginal buying from his speech, then maybe the market recovers, and he can take political credit for engineering a recovery. If the market tanks, burning all those who bought on his say so, then he can just walk away and say, "well I tried my best but you know, markets are unpredictable." It's a political call option, and the possible burning of citizenry wealth as a consequence is but inconsequential collateral damage. Liberals and socialists don't have any sense of fiduciary duty.
March 5 (Bloomberg) -- Robert Doll, global chief of equities at fund manager BlackRock Inc., talks with Bloomberg's Julie Hyman and Erik Schatzker about the outlook for U.S. stocks. Doll, speaking from Princeton, New Jersey, also discusses investment opportunities in energy and ... http://www.bloomberg.com/avp/avp.htm?clipSRC=mms://media2.bloomberg.com/cache/vwo27rD4g8oM.asf http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aiaHbCEjkge0